Bureaucracy-The Power that be

All private secretaries to Union ministers are equal, but S.R. Bhatia is more equal. Bhatia is the private secretary to Prakash Chand Sethi, the Union…

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Scrabbling Away From the Abyss

Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and…

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Great Stress Test

It’s good we now have a GST, but its design is another matter Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and…

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Hollowing Out

Governments cynically scoop out value from their own companies Privatisation will work only when the government sells more than 50 per cent of a state-owned…

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Sell Sell Sell

The government must take courage and embrace privatisation Two numbers speak eloquently about our schizophrenia over privatisation: the Rs 2.11 trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced…

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Anna Data

Our government owns one of the world’s biggest databases. What does it mean? Annadata means “Bestower of food” – a synonym for god. In some…

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